The most common pairing in the repair category, usually sold and dosed together. Both are animal-and-mechanism compounds with no human trials, and the TB-500 side carries a specific confusion worth knowing.
Side by side
| BPC-157 | TB-500 | |
|---|---|---|
| Class | Body-protection pentadecapeptide | Thymosin Beta-4 active fragment |
| Status | Research compound | Research compound |
| Route | Subcutaneous injection | Subcutaneous injection |
| Typical vials | 2 mg, 5 mg, 10 mg | 2 mg, 5 mg, 10 mg |
| Dose range | 250 mcg to 500 mcg | 2 mg to 5 mg |
| Frequency | 1 to 2 times daily | 1 to 2 times weekly |
| Half-life | No human data | No human data |
| Dosing unit | micrograms | milligrams |
Pharmacokinetics
No curves are shown, on purpose.
No published human pharmacokinetics for BPC-157 or TB-500. Drawing one curve against an absent one would imply a comparison that cannot be made.
What the evidence supports
These grade how well each outcome has been studied in humans, never how well either compound works. A strong grade can sit on a negative result.
The strongest evidence for any claimed outcome is Human, observational for TB-500 and Animal only for BPC-157. That gap is the most important line on this page.
BPC-157
| Outcome | Evidence |
|---|---|
| Gastrointestinal protection | Animal only |
| Tendon and ligament healing | Animal only |
| Any outcome in humans | No data |
TB-500
| Outcome | Evidence |
|---|---|
| Tissue repair (full-length thymosin beta-4) | Human, observational |
| Tissue repair (TB-500 fragment) | Animal only |
| Any outcome in humans from the fragment | No data |
How to choose
Neither has a published human trial
Everything claimed for either comes from rodent work or from reasoning about the parent molecule.
TB-500 is a fragment, and its parent has human data
Full-length thymosin beta-4 has been trialed in people. TB-500 is the actin-binding fragment, and those trials do not transfer to it. See AOD-9604 for how badly that assumption can go.
BPC-157's claim rests on a protein in gastric juice
The 15-residue synthetic sequence is not the same thing as the parent protein doing its job in the stomach.
They are usually combined, so evidence is rarely separated
Community reports almost always describe both at once, which means even the anecdotal signal cannot be attributed to either.
At the syringe
At the default setup on each compound's own page, a 5 mg vial in 2 mL puts 25 mcg on every insulin unit, while a 5 mg vial in 2 mL puts 25 mcg on every unit. That is the number that decides whether a dose lands on a readable mark, and it is set by how much water goes in, not by the compound.